16th Annual Mediterranean Studies Association Congress
University of the Azores—Angra do Heroísmo
Terceira, Azores, Portugal
May 29-June 1st, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Centro Cultural e de Congressos de Angra do Heroísmo
Canada Nova de Santa Luzia, Angra do Heroísmo
5:00 PM Registration opens
6:00 PM Opening Session
Opening Session Address
Name: Carlos E. Pacheco Amoral, University of the Azores, “Ideas of Europe and of West: The
Azores in the Transatlantic Adventure” CANCELLED
Aiming at the understanding of the Mediterranean from a broad interdisciplinary
perspective, regardless of either geographical or temporal borders The Mediterranean
Studies Association, is a broad and interdisciplinary entity. So much so that alongside
Croatia and Malaga, its membership stretches to such Universities as Massachusetts,
Kansas and Utah; and its annual conference is, this year, held in the Azores. Seen at this
light, the Mediterranean becomes no less than the Universe – as it indeed was at the
dawn of our Western civilization. Taking its cue from this broad, civilization, perspective,
and this address assumes a double dimension. On the hand, to present the Azores and
the Azoreans, notwithstanding the obvious Atlantic dimension of both the Archipelago
and its people. On the other, identifying the Azores in the framework of a Western,
Mediterranean, civilization will allow us to at least begin to identify some of the nuclear
elements of that civilization, or, put in another way, of the very idea of Europe. Not of
the “the small Europe”, as David Mitrany used to qualify the early pan-federalist
integrationist proposals, or the Europe of the 6 that ensued from the signature of the
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Treaties of Paris and of Rome, but of the “large Europe”, encompassing the Old
Continent, of course, but also all of the “the new worlds” it would “give to the world”, in
the words of the immortal prince of Portuguese poets: Luís Vaz de Camões.
Thursday, May 30
Universidade dos Açores - Angra do Heroísmo
Rua Capitão João d’Ávila, São Pedro
Thursday 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
1A. Mediterranean Studies I
Chair: Maria Soledad Fernandez Utrera, University of British Columbia
Byung-Pil Lim, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Korea, “A Study of the
Interrelationship of the Fixed Idea and Intercultural Communication: Focused on the
Arabic Caricatures about the UN”
In the 2006 one newspaper of Denmark published the caricature of the Islamic greatest
prophet Muhammad wearing the turban of a bomb and the whole Islamic world got
angry by that. The painting of the Prophet Muhammad which was the taboo of Islam
was a cause and above all the glossing over the Islam to the group of terrorism and
violence was the basic cause. And then in September 2012 a French satirical weekly
newspaper, Charli Hebdo reported the caricature which Muhammad talked to himself
“it’s very hard to be loved by the fools” standing by the title “Muhammad being pressed
under the extremists”. Whenever these events were happened the conflict between the
Islamic world and the country or the Western Christian world was getting worse and it
made worry about the realizing the clash of the civilizations. Only one picture drove the
whole world into the situation of confrontation and conflict. Like this the caricature
which showed briefly the images about a society as a whole has an influence on the
readers and the people around them. Meantime the images which were continually
appeared through the mass media like television, video, a movie, broadcast, a
newspaper, a magazine made a fixed idea and a bias, and also the caricature was the
factor of making a fixed idea. And the fixed idea and the bias which were influenced and
stuck by the caricature will be worked on the major factors blocking the interchange
between the different cultures. And so I will analyze the caricatures about UN (United
Nations) which were published in the major daily newspapers of the Arab world from
October to December. As you know, UN is the main body which have controlled and
solved the troubles and conflicts between the states and also he has had a strong
influence on the Arab world through the intervention of the uncounted events directly
or indirectly. Here we can understand UN in a broad sense including the NATO, the big
powers of the East and the West. And next I will deal with the theoretical background of
interrelationship of the fixed idea and Intercultural Communication, and I will check
about what the Arab caricatures based on the outcome of the analysis made. And also I
will study that the fixed idea will have some influence on the Intercultural
Communication between Arab and UN.
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Yoon Yong Soo, Institute of Mediterranean Studies, Korea, “The Acceptance of Foreign
Languages and Languages Fusion in Tunisia”
Tunisia has been the Islamic country since AD 7c and the present constitution of Tunisia
confines its identity as Islam and Arabic language. However, a lot of Tunisians (especially
the urban citizens and elite society) prefer the French language to Arabic language. This
research studies from here. Why? Although Tunisia having the long Islamic tradition,
why many Tunisian prefer the French language and its culture? I think that it is a close
relation with the French colony to Tunisia between 1881-1956. The French imperial
administration in Tunisia spread the advanced western culture in Tunisia and made
believe them to accomplish the modernized and advanced Tunisia through mimicking
France. Ironically this policy was succeeded even after independence of Tunisia by
Tunisians themselves. In this article, I research the French’s colonial language policy in
Tunisia and independence Tunisia administration’s language policy that has carried the
Arabization. Also, I research the language choice by the mass media of Tunisia and
Tunisian’s perception to the current language variations in Tunisia. I expect that I will
analyze the language interaction and its phenomena by the languages contact though
Tunisia.
João Lupi, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, “Maypole and Maybaum in
Brazil”
Saint Sebastian pole, besides an identification of his image, is the main "religious object"
of a Catholic popular ritual in the locality of Penha, in Santa Catarina State, Brazil. The
pole is prepared with flowers and foliages, and carried in procession to a place where
people put it in a hole on the ground. In the meanwhile women catch pieces of the
flowers, as a token to ask for a husband or children. The pole remains in that place and
people gather around to pray, sing and dance. This ceremony and feast is obviously a
ritual of fertility, the pole is a baptized maypole. All over Brazil similar ceremonies can
be found, protected by a multitude of catholic saints.
Noriko Sato, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea, “Reshaping the Ancient
Christian Tradition and Confirming Modern Syrian Identity: The Case of Syrian
Orthodox Christians in Syria”
My paper focuses on Syrian Orthodox Christians living in Syria, who have refugee origin
and have been marginalized due to the dominant political ideology promoted by the
political elite, which attempts to enhance the unity of Syrians based on an Arab-Islamic
culture. As a minority and a displaced group, the Syrian Orthodox Christians have
attempted to reshape and recast their collective history in order to secure their political
rights within Syrian society. As a survival strategy, the Syrian Orthodox Christians have
concentrated on communal activities, which fell within the wider framework of national
politics. Modern Syrian state politics emphasizes its secular identity and regards
religions as cultures shared by Syrians. In this context, the Syrian government attempts
to stress freedom of belief and respect for Christianity by emphasizing the Syria’s past
tracing back to ancient history of Christianity, which Syrians share with other Christians.
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Syrian Orthodox Christians reinterpret the Christian tradition of the Holy Face of Edessa,
which Eusebius of Caesarea first mentioned, and regard King Abgar V as their ancestor
who was the king of their homeland, Edessa, and who became a Christian in the first
century. In their project of reshaping their communal history, these Christians attempt
to create a linkage between their community and the ancient Christian King whose
messenger brought the portrait of Jesus to Edessa. They also refer to the existing
portrait as a proof that they are descendant of ancient Christians of the region.
Historical experience, which is the actual process of recalling past occurrences, is largely
affected by the social position of the ‘agency’ who relates the events, and by their
relationship to the political centre.
1B. Re-orienting the Veil
Chair: Martine Antle, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Sahar Amer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, “Teaching Muslim Women and
Veiling: A Pedagogical Model”
My presentation will propose a new model for teaching about Muslim women and veiling and
will demonstrate a pedagogical website I have developed, under the auspices of the
Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(http://veil.unc.edu). The main objective of this pedagogical model is to counter the
homogenizing tendencies of much of the scholarship and media discussions about this
topic. Instead, the veil website that will be presented takes an interdisciplinary approach
to the topic of veiling and examines veiling practices from a global perspective. This
approach allows the teacher and user to confront the multiple meanings of veiling
practices in Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority societies and to recognize the fact
that there is no explicit injunction to veil in Islam just as that there has never been one
singular or authentic way of wearing Islamic clothing. By focusing on religion and on the
extremist practices espoused by a minority of Muslims, political debates over Muslim
women’s veiling in Europe fail to apprehend the crucial role that culture, fashion,
geography, politics, and the economy play in any woman’s decision to adopt veiling.
Martine Antle, “Veiling in Art across the Mediterranean”
In this PowerPoint presentation I propose to survey art produced by contemporary women
artists in the Mediterranean that addresses and engages in dialogue with the question of veiling.
Their art points to the complexities surrounding any discourse on the veil and the contradictory
meanings that the veil can take in a postcolonial context. From the perspective of these artists,
the act of wearing or of taking off the veil is multifaceted and points more to the multiplicity of
meanings of the veil than to a singular essential meaning of the veil itself. Positioning
themselves as cross-cultural artists, these women artists across the Mediterranean regions are
particularly aware of the dangers of stereotyping and the risks of reinforcing Orientalist
stereotypes.
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Maria Ersilia Marchetti, University of Catania, “Veiling in Italy: Tradition and
Innovations”
This talk will first offer a comparative cross-cultural perspective between Italy and
France on the question of the veil. I will start by exploring this question through the
writings of Nerval, Le Clézio, Alberto Moravia and Dacia Maraini. I will then question the
extent to which contemporary writers such as Zahia Rahmani, Saphia Azedine and
Amara Lakhous challenge traditional views of veiling as presented in the media and how
they call for a new construction and interpretation of Islamic dress.
Amy I. Aronson, Valdosta State University, “Inside the Veil: Perceptions of the Harem
from the Outside”
The production, distribution, and consumption of literary depictions of the Middle
Eastern harem in the nineteenth and twentieth century relied on a number of local and
international social and cultural developments, not least of which was the market in the
“West” (in this case, Europe and North America) for what is known as “harem
literature.” Generally characterized by first person narration, harem literature emerged
by the mid-nineteenth century as a sub-genre of travel writing, one that especially
favored women whose gender gave, and was held to give, them special access to the
harem’s segregated spaces. Following many of the conventions of the emergent field of
travel literature, harem literature offered western women a chance to claim for
themselves a specialism within Orientalist knowledge that could be both generalist and
scholarly.
The existence of a substantial body of women’s writings from and about the Middle
Eastern harem, challenges the western Orientalist stereotype of harem women as
isolated, uneducated, passive, sexualized, and uniformly oppressed. Taken together,
these sources provide valuable evidence of the range of women’s participation in the
popular literary cultures that accompanied, tried to make sense of, and contributed to
the (gendered) debates about empire, nation, and statehood which marked a century
dominated by the variable fortunes of competing imperial models of East and West. This
paper will explore these sources, with particular emphasis on those from the Iberian
Peninsula, in an attempt to uncover the stereotypes and suggest an alternative
understanding of harem women.
1C. Europe and the New World
Chair: Susan L. Rosenstreich, Dowling College
Patrizia Granziera, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico,
“Evangelization in Portuguese India and New Spain: European Reactions to Devotional
Images of the Divine Feminine”
In Mexico and the Americas Catholic faith from the beginning has been essentially
Marian. The conquest of the New World was carried out under the protection of the
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Virgin Mary. The Spanish who disembarked in Mexico in 1520 brought with them many
images and statues of the Virgin Mary. These images, brought to protect them during
the voyage turned out to be the first Catholic holy representation that the “indios” saw
replacing their gods.
This Marianism of the colonial period in Mexico is linked to the counter-reformation
spirit in Europe and especially in Spain where in response to Protestant criticism of
Marian devotions, the Catholic Church vigorously promoted the cult of Mary and her
immaculate conception.
In Southern India the major encounter with Christianity came in the sixteenth century
with the arrival of the Portuguese. Trade, conquest and Christianization went hand in
hand for the Portuguese. Goa, which the Portuguese first gained control of in 1510,
formed the Asian centre of their overseas activities. Conversion to the Catholic faith
took place between 1527-1549. From the beginning, the task of evangelization was in
the hands of the missionary both in Mexico and India. These missionaries were all
fervent devotees of different Marian cults. However goddess cults were already a
central part of pre-Hispanic and Southern India religions.
This paper will explore how European missionaries responded to the popularity of the
goddesses in the new colonized lands (Mexico and India). It asks how similar or different
were the conceptions of the female divine and how Mary became the new terrible
protectoress of a certain space and community. This analysis will be based on an
examination of colonial writings and devotional images both in Mexico and Southern
India.
Susan L. Rosenstreich, “Islands and Exiles: The Early Modern French Voyage to the New
World”
If the official story is that sixteenth century France was interested in the New World for
its brazilwood and its supposed passageway to the Indies, travel writing from this period
tells quite another story. Attempting to carry out their daunting missions, French
explorers, resourceful as they may have been across the Atlantic, found themselves
isolated from their familiar world and out of reach of known sources of support. In their
helplessness, they naturally turned to natives for supplies and local knowledge. But this
understandable dependence on strangers clashed with the Frenchman’s assumption of
technological superiority. Cloaking this unpleasant reality in condescending descriptions
of crude engineering and coarse social practices in the New World, early modern French
travel writing discloses a much more complex relationship between the sixteenth
century Frenchman and the New World native. Cut off from his familiar life by the
rituals of departure from the home port that precede the outbound voyage, the traveler
is cast as an exile from his known world onto an island in the middle of nowhere, a new
world unconnected to the history of the Old World. On this island floating in time, the
traveler must relinquish his agency, and depend on native resources and knowledge to
construct a viable agenda for survival. But in his dependence on these peoples, the
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Frenchman is made intimately aware of nuances in native ways of life. Finding his
stereotypical judgments inadequate when he confronts native expertise, the traveler
develops deep sympathies with these strangers, expressing himself in the anecdotal
accounts of encounters between Frenchman and native. When he returns to France, the
traveler, once again in his familiar world, recovers his relinquished agency. But the
experience of exile, the complex feelings it engendered, tempers that agency with
nostalgia for a moment when the traveler found a home of his own amongst strange
friends on an island floating in time. Drawing on the travel writing from the expeditions
of Binot de Gonneville who sailed for a business consortium in Honfleur, the Florentine
Giovanni Verrazzano sailing for the French king, Jacques Cartier who crossed to Canada
at least three times, and René Goulaine de Laudonnière who attempted a Protestant
settlement in terra florida, this presentation follows the story of the relationship
between the early modern French traveler to the New World and the natives he
encounters, offering reflections on the universal experience of isolation and exile.
Elizabeth Kuznesof, University of Kansas, “Growing up in the Transatlantic Portuguese
World: Childhood and Education in Portugal and Brazil (1700-1900)”
Migration was integral to Portuguese culture. It was not surprising that Portuguese
youth spent time with kin in Brazil as Brazilian youth also did with kin in Portugal. Similar
values of economy, entrepreneurship and value for tradition and for kin influenced
Portuguese on both sides of the Atlantic. Their continuous migration also resulted in a
strong transatlantic culture and economy. This paper will be based on papers of
Portuguese entrepreneurs involved in international commerce as well as data relating to
migration and marriage.
Laurie Wilkie, University of California, Berkeley, “Material and Social Echoes of the
Azores in California”
First drawn by the whaling industry, Portuguese came to California first in the 1850s.
Many Azoreans migrated to Hawaii in 1877 to work on sugar plantations, but later left
for California, with many settling in the bay area counties of San Mateo and Alameda in
the 1890s. Farming failures, combined with an oppressive government regime in the
early 20th century led to more waves of Azorean emigration to California. Families and
communities moved together, settling where earlier generations had settled. In the
1870s, Azoreans founded or heavily developed several central California coastal
communities, such as Pescadoro and Half Moon Bay. Emigrations to the area continued
as recently as the 1970s. Azoreans in California are a Diasporic community, in that they
feel the politics and economics of their situations in the Azores led to a forced out
migration from their homeland, and a great deal of their self-identification arises from a
sense of loss and nostalgia for home, known in Portuguese as “saudade”. As I will
discuss, these Azorean immigrations have had an enduring impact on the material and
social life of the California central coast. Azorean foods, architectural styles, burial
practices, farming practices, and social organizations and festivals have become part of
the fabric of the central California’s coastal communities.
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Thursday 11:15 AM – 1:15 PM
2A. The Global Renaissance
Chair: Geraldo U. de Sousa, University of Kansas
Richard Raspa, Wayne State University, “Misreading the Text: The Limits of Classical
Virtue in Titus Andronicus”
The tragedy in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is sprung not by adversaries, cunning as
they are, but by Titus’ misreading of the social texts of ancient Rome and the speech
acts of his own sons, and the captured enemies of the Roman Empire--the Queen of the
Goths Tamora and her consort Aaron the Moor. The consequences of misreading shock
the early modern stage with acts of rape, mutilation, ritualistic killing, and cannibalism.
The play’s resolution turns on the accurate reading of another text from antiquity—the
story of Philomela and Procne from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. My paper deals with the
ways in which meanings are made and erased in Titus Andronicus through the reading
and misreading of cultural texts encoded in the Roman traditions of honor, allegiance,
public service, and the cardinal virtues as well Titus’ misreading the cues of his own
sons, and of Tamora and Aaron.
Geraldo U. de Sousa, “‘President of My Kingdom’: Boundaries in a Globalized World in
Antony and Cleopatra”
In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare represents the effects of global
interconnectedness and mobility, as well as attempts to sustain a sense of the local and
attempts to maintain our own “little” world when borders collapse and global forces
expand their reach. In particular, I explore what Lucy R. Lippard defines as the “lure of
the local,” “the pull of place,” and “the need to belong somewhere.” In this context,
“the lure of the local,” which Shakespeare’s play associates with Egypt, clashes with
Roman influence and hegemony. When Cleopatra insists on commanding her own
troops, side by side with Antony, into battle, she argues that she bears “a charge” in the
war, and that, “as the president of my kingdom,” she will appear on the battlefield “for
a man” (3.7.19-23). The play raises a fundamental question about what it means to
“preside” in such a world.
Gaywyn Moore, University of Kansas, “Lost and Found in the Azores: Redefining Worth
and Wealth in Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West”
Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West is a play awash in gold. The port towns of
England flow with Spanish booty liberated by honorable gentlemen and enterprising
pirates alike. The Azores themselves function as a contested site for determining the
nature of worth and wealth. Occupied by first the English, and then the Spanish, the
Azores inadvertently become a distribution center for New World wealth. After many a
pitched battle, the Azores must serve one more purpose: contested burial site for the
bodies of the English and Spanish combatants. The disinterred body of an English
Protestant becomes one more act of piracy, as Spanish mariners lay claim to his funereal
monument. The Azores act as a kind of philosopher’s stone, transmuting landed wealth
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into the liquid assets gained at sea, a barmaid into “a girl worth gold,” and a murderer
into an innocent.
David M. Bergeron, University of Kansas, “Thomas Middleton, Thomas Middleton:
London 1613”
What did Thomas Middleton, a London Grocer, and Thomas Middleton, a London
playwright, have in common in 1613? Plenty, as it turns out. Their professional and
personal lives intersected several times this year in important ways. Their intertwined
connections underscore a powerful link between dramatists and the City of London’s
guilds. This paper examines several of Middleton’s dramatic entertainments that
impinge on Middleton the Grocer and Lord Mayor. I argue that this rich connection
changed the dramatist’s professional life, leading him ever deeper on the
complementary road of civic involvement and the production of several Lord Mayor’s
Shows and the appointment in 1620 as City Chronologer.
2B. Mediterranean Studies II
Chair: Alma Jean Billingslea, Spelman College
Alma Jean Billingslea, “Black Diasporas in the Mediterranean”
The concept of “overlapping” diasporas, first articulated by historian Earl Lewis, has
been used primarily to dispel the notion of dispersal from one essentialized culture to a
specified host site. But the concept makes possible the idea that the history of black
diasporas globally is a history of many ethnicities, cultures, religions and traditions
coalescing under the sign of race. Using recent research on the African presence in
Renaissance Europe and African diasporas in the Mediterranean lands of Islam, this
paper focuses on the intersection of race, religion, culture and secular power in the
construction of identity for sub-Saharan Africans in the Mediterranean from the 15th
century onward. Owing to the trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave trades,
the number of captive Africans who were exported to Mediterranean lands is far more
significant than previously assumed. This paper, building on new research and new
approaches, examines issues of identity for sub- Saharan Africans in the Mediterranean
with specific reference to the historical experience of forced migration and racialization.
At the same time, given the historic reality of intense commercial, religious and cultural
exchanges in the Mediterranean, this paper also explores the degree to which these
exchanges enabled sub-Saharan Africans to straddle multiple spaces and complex
networks of affiliation to create what may be now called overlapping diasporas.
Jung Ha Kim, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Busan University of Foreign Studies,
Korea, “An Oriental Reflection on the Multiplex Cultural Identity of Sicily”
Culture (Mun-hwa), from the perspective of Eastern society, means patterns (Mun) of
various levels. It is reiterated in the basis of dynamics to become (or create) something
new (Hwa). Here, dynamics refers to the process of mobility within the cosmic dual
forces. Then, what is pattern? The Book of Changes describes pattern as the design of
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created world, which is a natural law from countless time, and reflection of all lives that
are interpreted in two-dimensional space derived from a natural law (Li-Chi).
Eventually, culture is time, and a pattern of both space based on time and developing
community within that space. In terms of a natural law, every cycle of live spreads
through the two-dimensional space is different in its contents and length. However, the
principle of the process - every life cycle starts from birth and ends to death - is
identical. This is called the principle of ‘Fractal structure’. Sicily is the society of multiplex
cultural identity. According to The Book of Changes, every change in the world prepares
for the new cycle of evolution and circulation when they meet the counterpart waiting
for them and formulate the relationship of harmony. Likewise, the multiplex cultural
identity of Sicily is a result of various cultures naturally (and organically) being
harmonized. Then, why is Sicily regarded as a ‘region of nothing done and at the same
time something done’, or as a territory of Mafia and social poverty, and as an
economical black hole of European Union? This judgment is a consequence of
antagonized logic about rationality and irrationality, or efficiency and inefficiency. This is
also a result of interpreting Sicily from a political hegemony which had been passed to
the northern part of the Alps after the fall of the Roman Empire, and from a politicaleconomic hegemony that Sicily is an alienated region of a global world.
No question is being satisfactorily answered about the reason why Sicily is an essence of
western culture even though people keep saying Sicily retains all legacy of Europe. This
study examines Sicily’s multiplex cultural identity in terms of Dae-Dae and You-Haeing
which are moving force of yin and yang, instead of the antagonizing concepts. Dae
refers to appreciate a counterpart as one’s partner, and Dae refers to wait and be
prepared for the counterpart. Thus, Dae-Dae generally means to wait for a counterpart.
You refer to flow, and Haeing refers to go, walk, run away, flow and experience. Overall,
You-Haeing means to experience or make something while something is in progress. In
conclusion, two concepts uncover the reason that anything in the world cannot create
new lives like stagnant water when a counterpart don’t exist, and neither the process of
development or evolution.
Throughout the history of Sicily or ‘siculi’, it has been continuously encountering
different kinds of counterparts. In terms of political-economic point of view, it can be
regarded as a simple logic of dominance and sub-ordinance, however, in social-cultural
respect; it was a process of formulating new instance through experiencing cultural
exchange and integration among various models while facing some factors of Dae-Dae.
Amikam Nachmani, Bar Ilan University, Israel, “A Most Vicious Weapon: Rape and War”
More and more we hear about a new/old weapon - - extremely primitive, very cheap,
alas highly effective - - that heavily affects the fate of wars and people: the use of rape
as a strategic weapon. In short: if wars erupt for the purpose of purifying and getting rid
of the ethnic group from unwanted foreign elements, then polluting and contaminating
the rival enemy group by rape, promises to produce the quick realization of these wars'
aims. There is also a clear aspect of genocide connected to raped women - - the removal
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of these women as potential future mothers with whom their community's men will
willingly have children. Traditionally, women who have been raped are forbidden to
men and it is prohibited to parent children with them in many communities. This further
impacts the demography and reduces the community's overall population. Rape, thus,
bears the facet of genocide. The irony of history is that WWII that broke out to clean the
Aryan race from unwanted elements resulted in more than two million cases of rape of
German women done by the Red Army. The hierarchy of races done by the Nazi regime
and the Aryan race scale adopted by it, put the Slavs, the Untermenschen, at the
bottom of race scale, in par with the husbandry animals. Side by side with new
sophisticated technologies and ultra modern weapons, one finds that the most effective
weapons recently used are the most primitive, cheap, and simple to use weapons - drop a plane on a high rise building, commit suicide bombing, or use the ultimate
weapon: rape your enemy's women.
The paper will discuss the phenomenon of rape in war and relate to recent examples
from the Mediterranean areas that have happened during the (poorly defined) "Arab
Spring": the civil war in Syria and the military campaign in Libya that brought about the
fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
2C. Literature, Film and Culture
Chair: James P. Gilroy, University of Denver
James P. Gilroy, “The Modernity of Prevost’s Grecque moderne”
In his 1741 novel, Histoire d’une Grecque moderne, based in part on historical figures,
the Abbé Prévost presents the story of Théophé, a woman seeking liberation. A young
Greek held captive in a Turkish harem, she is rescued from her life of sexual
enslavement by the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. She now hopes to have
the opportunity to cultivate her mind and attain the level of moral integrity he has told
her characterizes the women of Western Europe. Unfortunately for her, her liberator is
unable to free himself from his own prejudices about the subservience of women to
men, and he becomes the greatest obstacle to the fulfillment of her aspirations. He falls
in love with her, like Pygmalion with Galatea, and cannot understand why she refuses
his advances in the name of her new moral ideals. In his view, a sexual relationship
between a man and a woman in their positions is the only normal course of action.
Although in his more lucid moments he admits that he has no claim over her, he
becomes pathologically jealous and possessive. He blames her for his own failure to
acknowledge her rights as a human being. In the end he destroys both their lives. Her
pursuit of mastery over her own mind and body is thus thwarted, and she remains a
prisoner of male dominance. Théophé’s only ally is the author, who structures the
narrative in such a way as to provide sympathetic recognition an even protection of her
inviolable selfhood.
Maria Soledad Fernandez Utrera, University of British Columbia, “Primera Proclama de
Pombo”
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El Café, como dice Antoni Martí Monterde, es un espacio ideologizado y literario donde
se impulsa la modernidad críticamente (451-52). En España, los anarquistas, en
concreto, habían hecho del café—el Platerías, en Madrid, por ejemplo-- una pieza
funcional de su estructura descentralizada. Con el uso anarquista del café, se incorpora
la subversión proletaria (los clientes) a la heterodoxia burguesa (los propietarios
burgueses que regularizan el ocio y así lo convierten en negocio también [33]).
En esta charla se explorará el carácter ideológico con el que se origina la tertulia de
Gómez de la Serna. Para ello, se repasa sucintamente lo dicho por Ramón en referencia
al café y la tertulia. Especial atención se prestará a uno de sus primeros escritos: la
Primera Proclama de Pombo. Cuáles son los postulados ideológicos a partir de los que se
origina la tertulia del café Pombo? Está la ritualización de Pombo conectada a esta
significación ideológica y anarquista?
Eun-Jee Park, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Busan University of Foreign Studies
(BUFS), Korea, “Maghrebi Family Romance on French Screens: Alterity and Identity”
Contemporary French cinema has witnessed an increased visibility in the work of
filmmakers of Maghrebi descent who grew up in France. The term “beur cinema” refers
to this group of works, which now play prominent roles on the French screen. The
existence of Beur cinema came to indicate a particular form of films that rather
sympathetically portray the lived experience of Maghrebi families in keeping with
contemporary socio-economic and cultural situations in France. In these family
narratives, the young generation of French-Maghrebis is often caught between
“Muslim” and “French”. The trope of the traditional Muslim father and the assimilated
French son recurs persistently in the work of the beur cinema, constructing the
narratives and images of Muslim youth who leave behind their parents’ aspiration for
religion and identity. Different cultural expectations cultivated by young FrenchMaghrebis are more attuned to debates on social integration in France and, therefore,
the secular ideals of French nation-state. My paper addresses this cinematic
phenomenon by focusing on Bye-bye (Karim Dridi 1995) and Le Grand Voyage (Ismael
Ferrouhki 2004), two very different versions of Maghrebi family romance that
foregrounds intergenerational dynamics caught between Frenchness and otherness.
Thursday 3:00 – 5:00 PM
3A. Early Modern Studies I
Chair: Amy I. Aronson, Valdosta State University
Ronald Surtz, Princeton University, “Staging the Fall in Sixteenth-Century Spain: The Play
of Adam’s Sin”
The anonymous sixteenth-century Castilian play Aucto del peccado de Adán presents a
number of peculiar features in its dramatization of Genesis. Lucifer has two allegorical
companions, Gluttony and Avarice, who collaborate with him in leading Adam and Eve
into sin. Eve creates dramatic tension when she initially resists the Serpent’s flattering
words. And when the apple’s sweetness leads her to want to share it with Adam, he at
first refuses, but ends up tasting the fruit, not out of pride as in Genesis, but rather in
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order to please Eve. When God confronts Adam and Eve, Adam puts the blame on Eve,
while Eve blames the Serpent. As the play ends, Adam and Eve meekly accept their
punishment, even as the sword-wielding Angel who expels them from Paradise suggests
a future happy ending when he tells them to have faith in God’s mercy. The play
thematizes the twin motifs of clothing and nudity, thus inviting speculation as to the
role costumes or their lack may have performed in the staging of the play. The work also
makes use of two contrasting modes of music, harmonious for Adam and Eve, raucous
and demonic for Lucifer and his diabolic henchmen.
Marianna D. Birnbaum, UCLA, “A Renaissance Manuscript Dipped in ‘The Great Ocean
Sea’”
The manuscript under discussion, containing poems by the foremost Renaissance poet
of Hungary, Janus Pannonius, is housed in the Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina of
Seville. The first detailed description of the codex (7-1-15) was published by me in
"Viator" 4 (1973).
The Janus codex is a part of the thousands of works that Columbus’s son Fernando
collected. It includes pieces he inherited from his father’s personal library. This
collection of Janus's poems, gathered decades after the poet died, was copied by four
separate hands. One of the four, the sole copyist I was able to identify – tentatively also worked for Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. The slender volume displays water
stains, suggesting that at some time, it may well have fallen into the Atlantic.
Joshua M. White, University of Virginia, “Piracy, Slavery, and Subjecthood in the Early
Ottoman Mediterranean”
Who could and could not be legally enslaved in the early modern Mediterranean was a
question not only of religious identity—of Muslims enslaving Christians and Christians
enslaving Muslims—but also, in the Ottoman case, of juridical subjecthood. The
enslavement of Ottoman non-Muslim subjects, for example, was strictly forbidden
under Islamic and Ottoman law, but so too was the enslavement of the subjects of the
Ottomans’ treaty-partners, which included Venice during the long period of peace
between 1573 and 1645. Nevertheless, Ottoman-affiliated pirates often raided Ottoman
coastal possessions, capturing Ottoman non-Muslim subjects who were supposed to be
protected, as well as Venetian subjects and others whom they were treaty-bound not to
molest. Such raiders employed a variety of techniques to disguise the provenance of
their captives. They sold them in distant Ottoman ports where no one could identify
them, claiming they were legally enslaved enemy infidels, and they relied on longdistance networks of friendly officials and slave dealers who could be counted on to
look the other way for a share of the profits. Based on research in Ottoman
administrative documents and Venetian ambassadorial dispatches and consular reports,
this paper explores the trade in illegal captives by pirates and their accomplices in the
Ottoman Mediterranean, the difficulties inherent in defining and determining
subjecthood on the ground, and the administrative and legal tools the Ottoman central
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government employed, often in concert with Venice, to locate and identify the illegally
enslaved and effect their return home.
Angela Brandão, Universidade Federal de São Paulo—UNIFESP, “Livro dos regimentos
dos officiaes mecanicos: a transposição de modelos de trabalho artesanal e artístico de
Portugal para Brasil.” [“Livro dos regimentos dos officiaes mecanicos: The Transposition of
Handicraft and Artistic Work Model from Portugal to Brazil”]
Among the problems that have been currently clarified by art historiography in Brazil,
we can indicate the diversity of anonymous workers that composed construction sites of
the colonial religious buildings. In 1572, it was published in Portugal the legislation
entitled Livro dos Regimentos dos officiaes mecanicos da mui nobre e sëpre leal cidade
de Lixboa (Craftsmen’s Regiment Book of Lisbon). Those laws, derived from the
medieval corporations, organized all the system of the artisan’s works, previewing
different controlling methods. Those rules were actives in Portugal and in Brazil until the
end of the 18th century. Our interest is to understand, in this paper, the transference
from Portugal to Brazil of this artisan work model and its transformation into the
colonial reality. Among the control methods of manufacturing activities we can find the
presence of crafts judges, in the Câmaras Municipais, responsible for different
procedures in order to control the professional exercise, like examinations, licenses,
authorizations, and they were also responsible for evaluate the quality of the finished
works. In this group of precepts we can realize not only requirements on practical
knowledge, but also on artistic theories, probably based on the Architecture’s Treaties
by Serlio or Vignola. The examination that these craftsmen had to submit, in the case of
wood carvers, for example, consisted in showing their ability to project and to build an
altar piece, composed by the classic orders, and the capacity to apply classical elements.
Scholar knowledge is adapted for a practical usage by artisans, especially in the interior
architecture, in a sense to create monumentality applied on small pieces. All this system
that organizes the manufacturing and artistic activities, derived from Portuguese
medieval models, was modified when adapted in Brazilian colony, but in fact, the rigid
division of artisan’s works was not respected even in Portugal. According to the Livro
dos Regimentos, an artisan could not make a work that belonged to another group of
craftsmen. Probably this precept was not respected in a strict way not even in Portugal;
therefore many similar artisans’ activities were blended. All this control system was
complex because the artisans used to employ in their ateliers (called logeas, oficinas or
tendas) groups of African slaves. If the limits between Fine Arts and Arts & Crafts were
not so clear in the Portuguese artistic universe until the 17th century, several times a
wood carver was able to make an sculpture of an angel; an sculptor was able to
construct an altarpiece; a carpenter was able to construct a bridge, but also could be in
charged to make some delicate candlesticks; and so on. Different ways lead us to
conclude that the artistic and artisan’s activities, in their various modalities, are
superposed one over the others, and the artistic functions are developed by different
professionals, in construction sites of churches and their interior decoration in Colonial
Brazil. We can suppose that the dialogue between different kinds of artistic
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manifestation is complemented by the social circumstances in which the artisan
activities were developed.
3B. Azores
Chair: David Horta Lopes, University of the Azores
Armando Mendes, University of the Azores, “Relheiras: Séculos de história escrita no
Basalto”
O "carro de bois" é o principal veículo do mundo rural açoriano, estatuto que lhe é
conferido desde os primórdios da presença humana nas ilhas e que se prolonga até ao
advento da mecanização significativa da agricultura, que ocorre nos anos setenta do
século XX. Ao longo dos séculos, esses meios de transporte, servidos por rodas forradas
a aros de ferro, deixaram sulcos profundos no basalto das ilhas que se designam por
relheiras. Estas relheiras são âncoras capazes de alicerçar estudos com vista à
compreensão da cultura, da sociedade e da economia dos Açores. Na nossa
comunicação abordamos o caso da ilha Terceira. (Armando Mendes é Jornalista e
Assistente-convidado da Universidade dos Açores. Licenciado em História Científica; pósgraduado em Direito Regional; Mestre em Relações Internacionais.)
Francisco Miguel Nogueira, University of the Azores, “Azores during World War II—
Terceira Island Case”
The British arrived in Terceira, in October of 1943 and left the Island 3 years later. The
British landing in Terceira Island allowed the fast expansion of the runway and the
decrease of the unemployment, which had risen sharply because many farmers had
been expropriated of their lands. The state of war, the increasing of the population and
the lack of land for agriculture led the island to a growing shortage of raw materials and
a strong rationing. This caused an increase in the cost of living in the island, because
there were fewer products and more money. However, these prices were too high for
the purchasing power of the local people, who lived in a difficult situation.
The Portuguese-British interaction began with the hiring of local workers for the
Airfield and slowly intensified. The British began to take part in some local festivities,
having become closer to the women in the island. This was not well regarded by local
men, who forced the Military Commands to resolve the situation. During this period,
near the British camp, prostitution houses and taverns emerge in greater numbers.
The impact of the British presence can be seen by the intensified activity in
sports between the two peoples, the emergence of cinemas and bars with music, the
construction of the airfield, the appearance of words like "Bidon", but mainly in the
construction of the Aldeia Nova das Lajes, the portrait of the Portuguese-British
friendship. The Azores are an example of the importance of the outlying islands during
World War II. Keywords: British arrival; airfield; military base; Lajes; military; rationing;
expropriation; interaction.
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Álvaro Monjardino, Historical Institute of the Island of Terceira, “Atlântico: O Novo
Mediterrâneo”
3C. Ancient Mediterranean I
Chair: Susan O. Shapiro, Utah State University
Susan O. Shapiro, “Reciprocity and Justice in Catullan Invective”
Spyridon Tzounakas, University of Cyprus, “Caesar as Hostis in Lucan’s De Bello Civili”
In Lucan’s De Bello Civili, Caesar’s literary portrayal is embellished with elements that
oftenfacilitate his comparison to en external enemy of Rome. More specifically, either
explicitly or implicitly with artful intertextual allusions the poet compares Caesar with
Pyrrhus, Hannibal, or the Gauls and thus implies the ferocious and antinational stance of
the general. The example of the Ciceronian presentation of Catiline as hostis patriae as
well as the direct and indirect references to him by Lucan make the task all the easier.
Having thus drawn attention to Caesar’s remove from the notion of Romanitas, the poet
can equate the general’s prevalence with the subjugation of the nation more easily.
Vaios Vaiopoulos, Ιόνιο Πανεπιστήμιο (Ionian University), “Hypermestra querens: ReReading Ovid’s Heroides 14”
The paper concentrates on the myth about the Danaids as seen by Ovid in Heroides 14,
where Hypermestra, a personage known from epic and tragic poetry is cited within
elegiac ambience. The reader will be able to know the myth through the memories, the
hopes and the fears of Danaus’ daughter. What seems to be really peculiar about Ovid is
that he passes over the importance of love as a motive for Hypermestra’s disobedience,
although the Epistulae Heroidum is dominated by the notion of love. Apart from this,
Ovid presents her composing an elegiac epistle, in which the heroine’s lament is in
accordance with all the stylistic conventions of the Roman love elegy. However,
numerous hints and ambiguous expressions allow the reader to suspect that love and
love poetry is always present in Ovid’s priorities; if this is true, the poet has realized a
perfect deception of his audience by finally rejecting his own prima facie recusatio of
amor.
3D. Art History I
Chair: Thomas Prasch, Washburn University
Catherine Infante, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Captive Images: The Value and
Circulation of Visual Culture in the Early Modern Mediterranean”
Travel in the early modern Mediterranean often times entailed captivity and, as a result,
Spanish, as well as other European authors, described all sorts of travel experiences of
the numerous captives that fell into enemy hands and were forced to live in captivity.
However, although scholars have focused almost exclusively on human captivity, it was
not only human beings that suffered the pain of bondage, but sacred objects were also
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coveted and taken captive, sold, and redeemed by certain individuals on both sides of
the Mediterranean. In this presentation, I will look specifically at the travel and captivity
of sacred objects in Gómez de Losada’s treatise Escuela de trabajos (1670) and Andreu
de San José’s Relación del milagroso rescate del Crucifixo de las monjas de San Joseph de
Valencia (1625). These authors dedicate part of their work to giving an account of the
captivity of religious images that circulated between Turks and Christians in Algiers. I will
explore how these authors articulate the value of these images as they cross
geographical, religious, and cultural boundaries, and how a focus on the visual culture in
these texts can help elucidate our understanding of interreligious and cross-cultural
relations in the early modern Mediterranean world.
Ufuk Serin, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Middle East Technical University, Turkey),
“Byzantine Ankara and the Church of St. Clement”
Among the Byzantine churches of ancient Ankara only the vestiges of the church erected
within the temple of Rome and Augustus and those of St. Clement have survived. The
church of St. Clement, built of rubble stone and brick, was constructed on a crossinscribed plan, with a central dome, including a narthex, galleries, and a crypt. The date
of this church has long been debated, with several different proposals oscillating from
the second half of the fifth to the middle of the ninth century. The remains of this
building - almost completely lost before the 1960s - are in a poor state of preservation,
and no research has focused on St. Clement’s after the first quarter of the last century.
This paper intends to re-investigate the topographical, architectural, and ornamental
characteristics of this church as part of ongoing comprehensive research by the author
into Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara.
Saygin Salgirli, Sabancı Üniversitesi, “Art Histories of the Medieval Mediterranean: In
Search of a Common Language”
In 1942, Richard Krautheimer published “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Medieval
Architecture’,” where he argued that dissimilarities between an original building and its
copies were due to political choices that could be interpreted through meaning. In 1993,
Jonathan M. Bloom’s “On the Transmission of Designs in Early Islamic Architecture”
appeared, where dissimilarity between the original and the copy was no longer due to
political choice, but the result of an inability to translate visual language to textual
language. Four years later, in “The Islamic Rider in the Beatus of Girona,” O.K.
Werckmeister demonstrated that an image that was previously interpreted as an Islamic
St. George slaying a serpent was indeed a generic persecutor of Christians. In a given
context, even the most iconic imagery could be subverted to mean exactly the opposite.
In 2004, Oya Pancaroglu’s “The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer” reversed this critical
perspective, and argued that dragon-slayer images, regardless of context, bound
together the diverse ethnic and religious communities of Anatolia. By taking the lack of
communication between these articles as a methodological starting point, this paper is
going to search for a common art historical language that would unite rather than
compartmentalize the art history of the medieval Mediterranean.
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Thomas Prasch, “‘The Attributes of His Ancestors’: John Thompson’s Photographic
Expedition to Cyprus, 1878”
Photographer John Thomson, arriving at the “one English hotel in Cyprus” in 1878, in
the immediate wake of the Berlin Conference of 1878 that resulted in Britain taking over
administration of the island, found himself surrounded by “a number of disconsolate
Englishmen, whose only occupation apparently consisted in asking each other …
whether they had had fever, whether they liked the place … when they were going back,
why they had come to such a place, and altogether the reception was rather dispiriting,”
almost leading Thomson “to return [to England] at once.” But he persevered in his
project to photograph the people and topography of Cyprus, reporting in a more
optimistic spirit that, “although the island has been woefully wrecked by Turkish
maladministration … it is neither barren nor ‘exhausted,’ and … may regain something at
least of its old renown.” But if Thomson seems to place Cyprus, as he had China two
decades before, as a country with the potential to be reawakened to civilization through
modern commerce, the photographs and accompanying texts assembled to document
his journey tell a different story: not of progressive possibilities, but of changelessness,
of a people and place largely unchanged through the sequence of conquests to which
they had been subjected. As British power succeeded Ottoman domination on the
island, such a message promised little to the new conquerors. Thomson’s pioneering
street photography, first in China and then in East London, have gained significant
scholarly attention, but his final photographic expedition to Cyprus has been largely
neglected by scholars. This paper will redress that neglect.
Friday, May 31
Friday 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
4A. Towards the Central Mediterranean: Trade Routes and Travels to Naples and Sicily (18th19th Centuries)
Chair: Salvatore Bottari, University of Messina
Salvatore Bottari, “Sicilian Foreign Trade in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century”
Foreign trade was one of the most important sectors for the Sicilian economy in the
early modern age. Thanks to its geographical position in the centre of the
Mediterranean Sea, Sicily played a key role in the commercial competition between
Britain and France. The proposed paper aims at analyzing the Sicilian foreign trade in the
second half of the eighteenth century. It focuses, particularly, to the sea routes and the
quantitative and qualitative dimension of trade. This research is based on primary
sources from British, French and Italian archives.
Mirella Mafrici, University of Salerno, “The Russian-Neapolitan Treaty and the
Commercial Relations between the Two States (1787-1806)”
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The opening of the Black Sea to foreign trades and the freedom of navigation for Russia,
at first, and then for Austria, France and other nations brought a new start in
commercial relations between these ports and the Mediterranean ones. And, after the
Austro-Russian alliance (1781), it was the Neapolitan court, and especially Queen Mary
Caroline, to show their interest towards the Romanov Empire, though it was only in
January 1787, after four years of dealing –that the Russian-Neapolitan treaty was signed
at Tsarskoe-Selo. This treaty, similar to the French-Russian alliance signed a few days
before, caused a not unjustified alarm among several States, which saw not only a new
economic bound between the two States, but also a mutual neutral support in case of
war. The treaty brought many new issues: besides the possibility of professing their own
religion at home or elsewhere as decided by the two governments, the institutions of
consuls and vice-consuls in four ports – two in the Sicily and two in the Russian Empire –
, a monetary agreement, uncommon at that time, and primarily the Russian trading flag
to be given to the Neapolitan vessels heading the Black Sea.
Rosa Maria Delli Quadri, University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Italy), “From the New to the
Old World: Americans in Naples and in the Mediterranean (1800-1850)”
If for British travelers traveling to the Southern Europe is a rite of passage that has its
roots in the tradition of the Grand Tour, for Americans the Atlantic Tour is an entirely
new experience, as it is new, in the early nineteenth century, their presence in the
Mediterranean waters. The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study on the
routes, means and itineraries of American travelers in the first half of the nineteenth
century facing the Atlantic crossing to visit the Old Continent. This analysis, carried out
by intersecting various repertoires with travel memoirs written by the 'Innocents
Abroad', had as its theme the Mediterranean journey of the ‘children’ of old Europe.
They are travelers sought, hunted, played and accompanied along the route chosen to
reach Naples, the capital of the Italian Mezzogiorrno, which is the border area
fascinating or alarming between Europe and the ‘others’, and to continue to the Levant,
the house of the ‘other’. Particular attention will be given to Walter Colton; a Chaplain
for the United States Navy, who before passing Gibraltar in 1832 stopped at Madeira
and Terceira and described his journey in Ship and Shore in Madeira, Lisbon, and the
Mediterranean.
4B. Early Modern Studies II
Chair: Dan Reff, Ohio State University
Dan Reff, “Luis Frois’ Tratado (1585) and the Idea of European/Mediterranean Culture”
In 1585 a Portuguese-Jesuit missionary in Japan named Luis Frois penned a treatise
titled “Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan.” Reading Frois’ chapters
on subjects such as food, architecture, drama, and religion it becomes apparent that
“Europe” for Frois meant Mediterranean Europe, particularly Portugal, Spain, southern
France, and Italy. This thoroughly Catholic part of Europe supplied the vast majority of
Jesuits sent to Japan, particularly after 1570. However, Frois clearly spoke of European
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customs because he understood that his own country of Portugal had become part of a
larger entity and cultural system. Lisbon, in particular, was as cosmopolitan as any city in
Europe and was home to large numbers of merchants, craftsmen, artists, and
adventurers from northern as well as southern Europe. Drawing from the Tratado, this
paper offers a composite picture of "European culture" as per Frois. It is suggested that
the discovery of whole new worlds and alien cultures during the sixteenth century
seemingly compelled observers such as Frois to embrace larger affinities and identities,
which endure, even if they remain contested.
Carol Beresiwsky, Kapiolani College, “Manila Galleons, Trade, and Diplomatic Relations
between Spain and Japan in the Early 17th Century”
During the era of the Manila Galleons (1565 to 1815), Spanish treasure ships plied the
Pacific in round trip voyages from Acapulco, New Spain (Mexico today) to Manila,
Philippines. Silver from the mines of the New World was traded for spices, pottery,
lacquer ware, embroidered silks and other luxury goods for the Spanish and the
European markets. In 1609 the galleon San Francisco was shipwrecked off the coast of
Japan. Among the survivors was the outgoing Manila governor, Rodrigo de Vivero
Velasco. Because of his status, he was received at the local Japanese prefecture, and
also at the court of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu with great ceremony. Before returning
to New Spain on a ship provided by the Japanese, he negotiated the first diplomatic and
trade relations between Spain and Japan. The Relación (Account) of his experiences,
required by the King of Spain, gives a glimpse of rural and courtly Japanese society in the
early 17th century from the Spanish viewpoint. My talk will focus on the content of the
Relación and include information about the historical period, and the impact of the
galleon trade on the culture of today’s Mexico, when it was still a colony of Spain.
Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, University of Winnipeg, “Conflict and Conflict Resolution in
Seventeenth-Century Terceira”
Of the nine islands that make up the Azores Archipelago, Terceira and São Miguel are
the largest and the most populated, and the two played important roles in the
Portuguese trans-Atlantic trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, a
royal decree dated 29 March 1670 prohibited all ships coming from India from stopping
at any other port than the one in Terceira or in Lisbon. The archipelago’s bishopry was
located in Terceira’s capital, Angra do Heroísmo, as was the crown’s judicial and political
representative, the Corregidor. Unfortunately few sets of records from the early modern
period have survived from the Corregidor’s office, in the Azores as well as in other
districts of mainland Portugal. My recent programme of research delves into questions
of crime and conflict, and the mechanisms in place to resolve inter-personal disputes in
the pre-modern era. In the case of early modern Portugal, the best examples of
negotiated settlements in conflict resolution are found in the notarial collections. For
this conference presentation, I will analyze some examples found in the district archives
located in Angra do Heroísmo, examples that highlight some of the concerns of
particular interest to the region in the seventeenth century.
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Mark Emerson, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas, “A Question of Authority:
Denying and Defying the Power of the Portuguese Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal”
The paper to be presented is part of a larger project of new research on active
resistance to the Inquisition in early modern Portugal. One of the key features of the
power and authority of the Portuguese Inquisition was its ability to investigate arrest
and convict anyone suspected of hindering or challenging the Inquisition’s authority or
progress of inquisitorial activities. Thousands of individuals in early modern Portugal
faced arrest and punishment for the sole transgression of impeding the authority of the
Inquisition.
This paper concerns a case study of individual defiance of an inquisitorial trial’s inquest
and verdict. Salvador do Canto, a prominent Jesuit, served as rector in the University of
Évora during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. He was a strong
advocate of the mystical approach to faith and cultivated relationships with local
visionaries. For many years, he heard the confessions of the young visionary Ines
Gonsalves or de Jesus. He subsequently publicized and verified the sanctity of her
visions. The Inquisition of Lisbon arrested Ines in 1618 and charged and convicted her as
a false visionary and with making a pact with the devil. Despite her conviction, Friar
Canto wrote a fiery pamphlet in a careful and detailed defense of Ines as a true visionary
of God and dissected and condemned the Inquisition’s decision. In response, the
Inquisition arrested Salvador do Canto for publicizing heresy and, especially, for his
direct questioning of the Inquisition’s authority and his defiance of its resolutions.
This paper explores inquisitorial efforts to censor alternative views of the mystical
experience, to define and delimit heresy, and punish those that question its authority in
seventeenth-century Portugal.
4C. Medieval Studies I
Chair: Joan Dusa, Los Angeles
Luigi Andrea Berto, Western Michigan University, “Praising and Criticizing Venetian
Dukes in the Early Middle Ages”
The "Istoria Veneticorum" ("The History of the Venetians"), a chronicle attributed to
John the Deacon, chaplain and ambassador of the Venetian Duke Peter Orseolo II (9911008), is of fundamental importance for the reconstruction of early medieval Venetian
history. In addition to being the only historical narrative of that period, it covers the
entire early middle Ages (569-1008). The period in which this work was written is
particularly relevant for Venetian history because it witnessed the restoration of the
internal peace after many years of grave conflicts among aristocratic factions and the
transformation of Venice into the leading power in the Adriatic Sea. The goal of this
paper is to examine the way John the Deacon praised and criticized the Venetian rulers
in his chronicle and to demonstrate that he did not limit himself to a mere recording of
dates and events. Instead, by carefully employing the words—probably in order not to
reopen recent wounds—the Venetian historian was able to express his opinions about
the dukes who had governed his homeland.
21
Joan Dusa, “The Papal Doctrine of ‘Outside the Church There Is No Salvation’ in
Fourteenth-century Eastern Europe”
In fourteenth century Europe, the most powerful political entity was still the papacy. As
such, the perceptions, judgments and identifications made by the Church dominated
universal lay thinking as well. Though the Popes asserted sovereignty over all society,
full acceptance did not encompass those outside the ecclesiastical reach. Due to the
changing political landscape, threats to papal authority, and developments in
theological thinking, the papacy made a more intense effort to bring those “outside the
Church,” that is, schismatics, infidels, heretics, pagans and Jews, into the fold of
“universal Christendom.” The objective was to convert the infidel and pagan, unite the
schismatics with the Latin Church, and bring heretics and Jews to profess the true Faith,
guiding them all to salvation.
The Popes issued directives to lay rulers all over Europe, (Hungary, Poland, Sweden,
Spain, etc.) to force the outsiders into the Roman fold. This paper, specifically, will focus
on the crusading demands placed on the Kings of Hungary to bring those extra
ecclesiam in their realm and from the surrounding areas to come to obey the Roman
Pontiff. The discussion will examine the terms, schismatic, infidel, heretic and pagan, in
the context of the papal doctrine of “extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” and question how
they came to connote ethnic identifications in fourteenth century Eastern Europe.
Krystle Perkins, Wayne State College, “Corporeal Creativity in Catalonian Notarial
Manuals”
Medieval Carnival was a dynamic festival that was both restrictive and liberating to
citizens of medieval towns; these dual natures are clear in the rituals, activities, stories,
and art connected to the celebration. Daily life in medieval Catalonia was a continual
struggle for survival and also for social position. The yearly occurrence of Carnival was a
rare time when the ordinary was shed for the unusual. This suspension of social status
and corresponding rules allowed for both rich and poor to simultaneously push each
other to the limit while testing the boundaries of power. The strain in urban society is
quite visible in hundreds of pieces of marginalia in notarial documents from Girona,
Spain dating from 1250-1500. These typical municipal records are decorated with usual
marginalia that at times relate to the record itself and at others seem isolated from the
text. A handful of records from the Arxiu Històric de Girona illustrate the delicate
balance of power during the chaotic time of Carnival. These written and visual sources
add to the understanding of medieval Carnival as well as open the door to
understanding medieval urban society and the daily power struggle within a city.
Friday 11:15 AM – 1:15 PM
5A. Ancient Mediterranean II
22
Chair: Susan O. Shapiro, Utah State University
Helen Dixon, University of Michigan, “Friend in Life, Symbol in Death: Understanding
Intentional Dog Burials from the Phoenician Levant”
A series of Iron Age Levantine Phoenician sites have yielded archaeological evidence of
purposeful dog burials – eight in a 10th-8th century BCE cemetery at Khaldé, one under a
broken vessel in the small salvage excavations at 5th-4th century BCE Tell el-Burak, and
an “extended dog cemetery” found in excavations of the 6th-4th century BCE
fortifications in Beirut. The 5th century BCE dog cemetery at Ashkelon, further south,
produced more than 700 partial or complete dog burials, and has also been attributed
to Phoenician influence. Because the Lebanese dog burials have not all been thoroughly
published, this practice has not been examined in detail outside of discussion of the
Ashkelon dog cemetery.
This paper examines intentional dog burial as a Mediterranean phenomenon, seeking to
understand the Phoenician examples in light of the treatment of dogs at death (and
their ritual associations in other contexts) in neighboring Mediterranean cultures.
Examples from the Aegean, Anatolian, and Egyptian cultural spheres will be examined.
Rather than seeing the Levantine burials as evidence for a Phoenician practice to be
delineated on a purely “ethnic” basis, a more complex continuum of Iron Age
Mediterranean beliefs about the canine will be proposed as necessary to understand
this phenomenon.
Işık Şahin, Trakya University, “Dedications to Meter from Lydia: The Epithets of Meter”
The numerous votive inscriptions found in Lydia situated in western Anatolia, gives
information about the gods who worshipped in the region. The Mother (Matar/Meter)
Goddess of Anatolia known by many epithets (epitheton) in Lydia. Her cult was
particularly prominent in central and western Anatolia and spread from there through
the Greek and Roman world. This study aimed to bring together the epithets of Meter
used in Lydia. In this study 145 dedication inscriptiones dated mostly to the second B.C.
and 35 different epithets of Meter are collected. Eight epithets of Meter such as Aliane
and Matyene were derived from a toponym name. Other epithets were derived from a
name of person such as Adiassopoulou (?), from a name of the mountain such as Sipylos
Mountain or from the meaning of unknown names such as Akraia.
Jan-Marc Henke, Centre of Mediterranean Studies (ZMS), Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
“Network Theory and Foreign Offerings in Greek Sanctuaries of the 7 th and 6th Centuries
B.C.E: Evidence of ‘Trans-Mediterranean Networks’?”
Archaeologists emphasize the significance of finds of non Greek provenance in different
Greek sanctuaries or cemeteries of the 7th and 6th B.C. as evidence of intensified TransMediterranean communication between the emerging Greek city-states and especially
Anatolia and the Near East. The sanctuary of Hera on Samos provides a compelling
amount of such objects, once offered to the goddess and now found in modern
excavations. Even if the provenance of its manufacture can be in most case identified
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and graphically recorded in impressive distribution-maps, the exact stages of their
voyage and the identity of involved people remain largely uncertain. Explanations range
between the agency of merchants, mercenaries or “diplomats” of different ethnicity.
Network theory has perhaps the potential to contribute more to the illumination of this
problem. This paper argues that it is necessary to focus on individual cases rather than
search for universal paradigms. It aims at to retrace the possible biography of two
objects found in the Heraion, whose transport appears to have followed two different
but interwoven Trans-Mediterranean networks. One reflects a network of elite
diplomacy; the other is the result of trade targeted at a wider range of involved
customers and profit. The paper seeks to apply modern network theories onto
archaeological material in order to provide a wider comprehension of TransMediterranean communication in the past.
Ana M. Mitrovici, University of California, Santa Barbara, “To the Ends of the Earth:
Reception of Hercules in Roman Dacia”
This paper explores the worship of Hercules in the Roman province of Dacia (roughly
modern day Romania) in the period following the Roman conquest under Emperor
Trajan. Dacia’s strategic location beyond the limes facilitated the expansion of trade,
movement of peoples, and the reception of religious beliefs from the east and west of
the empire. This process was further encouraged by the connective role of the Danube
River, a feature commonly referred to by archaeologists as the great “corridor” of
Europe. Far from serving as a barrier, the Danube connected provinces throughout the
empire and linked inland regions through its system of tributaries. In this paper I explore
the military’s influence on the development of Hercules’ role as a healer in Dacia,
particularly in the context of balneotherapy (hot water treatments for medicinal
purposes). Throughout the Greco-Roman world, Hercules was known as a cross-cultural
deity, transcontinental in his appeal, with temples and sanctuaries dedicated to him
across the European continent and Northern Africa. From this cultural framework, I
trace the development of Hercules from a god of Mediterranean origin to his reception
in the province of Dacia and his significance in the daily life of communities established
in the region after the Roman conquest.
5B. Art History & Archaeology
Chair: Patricia Zupan, Middlebury College
Patricia Zupan, “Frescoes of Siena Duomo’s Lower Church
(“Crypt,” c. 1265-1280) as Virtual Pilgrimage to the Holy Land”
In 1999, excavations of the so-called “Crypt” under Siena’s Duomo uncovered a wellpreserved cycle of Old and New Testament frescos, by internal evidence considered
collaboration among Siena’s most prominent pictorial artists of the 1260s and early
1270s, Guido di Graziano, Dietisalvi di Speme, and Guido da Siena. Presumed to date
from the time of Nicola Pisano’s bas-relief Pulpit, c. 1265-1270, the Crypt cycle also
shows clear evidence of the influence of Pisano’s epochal return to Roman naturalism.
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My purpose will be to explore the devotional purpose of the Crypt cycle, a purpose
directly related to its location on the still-extant Via dei Pellegrini, the urban tract of the
Via Francigena in Siena. Scholars have recently concluded that Crypt’s thenunderground location provides pilgrims a meditative antechamber before their ascent
into the Duomo proper. In a setting both more intimate and more focused on the
narrative and images themselves, the cycle thus testifies to a significant change in
affective and participatory devotion, as a kind of “walking meditation” or “virtual
pilgrimage” through the site.
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem itself became progressively difficult and dangerous after the
city’s progressive fall to indigenous Muslim armies and rulers from 1244 on, making
Rome the premiere Christian pilgrimage site in the Mediterranean. I thus will also
explore how this cycle, along with others following in the late Duecento and Trecento,
exists to provide an “alternative” or “virtual” pilgrimage to the Holy Land itself, whereby
the devout re-imagine a Jerusalem in European and Italian terms, marked with
prominently, contemporary, Duecento Italian architectural and urban settings.
Barbara J. Watts, Florida International University, “Dante, Simony, and Sixtus IV and the
Brancacci Chapel: Filippino Lippi’s Disputation between St. Peter and Simon Magus before
Nero”
This paper will offer a new interpretation of Filippino Lippi’s fresco of the Disputation
between St. Peter and Simon Magus before Nero in the Brancacci Chapel, Sta. Maria del
Carmine, Florence (ca. 1480-85). It will situate the fresco’s subject within the thematic
context of the cycle that Masaccio and Masolino began in the 1420s, and will show that
Filippino’s treatment of the subject made his representation of St. Peter’s confrontation
with Simon Magus particularly relevant to its Florentine audience of the 1480s.
Specifically, it will address the striking similarity of Filippino’s rendering of Simon Magus
to portraits of Dante Alighieri, and proffer a reason for this unusual use of Dante’s
visage, using memory theory as practiced in antiquity and in the Early Modern period.
The likeness of Dante in the guise of Simon Magus, I will argue, was intended to trigger
the spectator’s memory of Dante’s Inferno XIX, in which those guilty of simony are
incarcerated, and in which the poet vilifies the simoniacal popes of his day (Nicolas III,
Bonifice VII, Clement V). Dante’s text, I argue, would prompt the viewer to think of papal
simony in his/her own day, particularly the papacy of Sixtus IV (1471-84). Sixtus, the
enemy of the Medici, who placed Florence under interdict following the Pazzi Conspiract
(1478), was, according to Florentine denunciations of him, a false shepherd elected
simoniacally, who had prostituted the chair of St. Peter. In short, in Filippino’s painting,
poetic memory mediates between the worlds of text and image, offering the spectator a
vision of the past that, in Dantean fashion, speaks passionately to the present.
António Félix Flores Rodrigues, University of the Azores, “Megalithic Discoveries in the
Azores”
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The megalithic constructions in Western Europe and the Mediterranean were erected
during the Neolithic or Copper Age. Megalithic tombs are found in Europe, from the
Northern Sea coasts to the south of Spain and Portugal. No megalithic structures, or
structures that resemble megalithic tombs, were found until now in the Azores islands.
The recent Terceira Island megalithic findings seem to be a paradox, since the islands
where discovered by the Portuguese navigators in the XV century, and historically, no
people where found living in the Azores. Geographically, the Azores are located about
1,500 km west of Lisbon, and about 1,900 km southeast of Newfoundland, and
geologically were never bounded to the mainland. If these findings are from the Bronze
Age, it means that the people from the megalithic culture successfully travelled in the
open sea without the help of maps or other known navigation tools.
We have also found rock art at the mentioned megalithic site, with representations
close to those dated back to the Bronze Age. The present article compares the megaliths
findings in the Azores with those known in Europe. A question remains: Are these
findings from prehistory, or an imitation of prehistory made by the Portuguese?
Antonieta Costa, University of Oporto, “The Phoenician Sanctuaries of Terceira Island:
Symbolic Interpretation”
History is being rewritten everywhere in the world, as well as in the Azores, where
archaeological remains from different cultures are being brought to new
understandings, although finding great difficulties of acceptance.
Mont Brazil, a peninsula in front of Angra, the south coast of Terceira Island, was
apparently chosen by Phoenicians as a sanctuary. The hypothesis is based on similarities
found between the symbolism used to represent Carthaginian goddess Tanit (Astarte of
the Phoenicians) and the trapezoidal design of two caves found there.
5C. Language, Linguistics, & Lexicography
Chair: Anita Herzfeld, University of Kansas
Anita Herzfeld, “Lunfardo: The Argentine Catalyst of the Creolization of European
Operas”
Lunfardo, the popular speech of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the rich language used by
ordinary speakers to express themselves. It is in effect a koine—a regional dialect that
has become the common dialect of a larger area. It has spread from the capital to
inland, and has even reached other neighboring nations, such as Paraguay and Uruguay.
But lunfardo is not only the dialect that nourishes the speech of the average “porteño,”
it is also the praxis of the literary composition which saw its most well-known
beginnings in the lyrics of tangos. From the lyrics of tangos, the popular imagination has
jumped to similar dramatic plots as those immortalized by operas. Uniquely so
(although never performed in public) a speaker and writer of lunfardo, Elsa Rossi Raccio,
in “Las minas de la opera,“ has taken upon herself the ominous task to translate the
lyrics of some operas to lunfardo, to show the creolization of the characters and their
26
interpretation of universal emotions through their dialect. Excerpts from three
European operas, “La Traviata,” “Carmen,” and “Lucia de Lammermoor” will be played
and analyzed to show the reinterpretation of the original language into lunfardo, so as
to depict the characters’ sorrowful preoccupations as seen through the lens of the
creole dialect and imaginary.
Paul M. Chandler, University of Hawaii, “Mejoremos la enseñanza del vocabulario”
This presentation examines means of improving the systematic instruction of vocabulary
in the Spanish as a foreign language classroom by applying what we know from research
in first and second language vocabulary learning. Spanish examples will be applicable to
other languages.
Kathryn Klingebiel, University of Hawaii, “The Alienability Difference: New Evidence
from French”
Dictionaries and grammars of French yield a small set of French nouns, adjectives, and
verbs that give every sign of paralleling the distinction between alienable and
inalienable possession, as found, for example, in Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian.
This is the distinction between objects which one can either choose or not choose to
possess, such as alienable objects (a hat, a book) versus inalienable body parts or
grandparents. In Hawai`ian the categories of alienable and inalienable possession are
fully grammaticalized: first, in the system of –a– and –o– possessive adjectives: ka`u
puke ‘my book’ (alienable) / ko’u lima ‘my hand’ (inalienabel) and second, through use
of prepositions a and o: nā iwi a Pua 'Pua's bones (e.g., the chicken bones she is eating)'
nā iwi o Pua 'Pua's [own] bones'
This paper illustrates the alienability difference in French with some new evidence, e.g.,
Fr. cadavéreux ‘cadaverous’ (like a cadaver, implying a comparison) / cadavérique
‘cadaveric’ (of or belonging to a cadaver). Our explanatory framework gains in strength
by moving beyond the strict sense of ‘inalienable’ to include what is ‘intrinsic' or
'inherent’ and even further yet, to what is sometimes termed 'universal' aspect, as
illustrated by the difference between Fr. malade ‘(temporarily) sick’ and maladif
‘(permanently) sickly’. The French material comes into sharp focus if we broaden our
understanding of ‘possession’ to include qualities or characteristics with which an object
or person is possessed, whether ‘intrinsically’, ‘inherently’, or ‘permanently’.
This new approach allows us to relate these lexical contrasts like cadavéreux /
cadavérique to three other grammatical structures: (i) possession of body parts, which is
traditionally cited with reference to inalienable possession in French; (ii) subjective vs.
objective genitive, as illustrated by the above pair: nā iwi a Pua 'Pua's bones (that she is
eating)’ / nā iwi o Pua 'Pua's [own] bones' and (iii) relational adjectives, e.g., nucléaire
‘nuclear [pertaining to the nucleus]’, which appear by their very nature to express a
relationship of possessive or belonging.
Robert Lafont, the late great linguist and man of letters from the south of France,
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provided an insight into the motivation for the phonetic distinction between –a- and –oin Hawai`ian possessives, positing that the velar vowel –o– is better suited to expressing
the inalienable because it is produced further back in the throat, closer to the interior of
the body.
The new evidence for alienability in French offered here is far from systematic, while the
Hawai`ian system dividing the entire world into two classes is systematically and
consistently observed in the grammar. However, an approach through Hawai`ian to
pairs like Fr. cadavérique/cadavéreux does have the advantage of explaining contrasts
between items commonly listed in “dictionaries of difficulties of the French language”,
items which apparently continue to mystify the French as well as those of us who study
this eternal language.
Friday 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
6A. Travel and Empire
Chair: Russell Scott Valentino, Indiana University
Russell Scott Valentino, Indiana University, “A Tale of Two Cities: Culture and Identity at
the Edges of Empire”
This paper explores historical parallels between the late imperial cities of Trieste and St.
Petersburg. These are modern commercial and governmental centers that emerged
quickly and by imperial decree. Their location on the physical outskirts and at the
temporal boundaries of the respective Romanov and Hapsburg monarchies, and, most
intriguingly, their respective urban “myths” (the artificial, the ghostlike, the
schizophrenic)—make of them a suggestive comparative topic for coming to a fuller
understanding of the fascination that the two centers exercised particularly during the
Modernist cultural flowering of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This
paper sets out the contours of a larger study, with particular emphasis on the
confluence of literary and architectural myth making.
Christos Theofilogiannakos, University of California, San Diego, “The Perennial
Periphery: Culture, Identity and Politics on the Ionian Islands”
The study of borderlands provides a unique historical perspective on the agency of
marginalized communities in the Mediterranean. This paper focuses on the Ionian
Islands and their eventual incorporation into the Kingdom of Greece in 1864.
Fundamentally the Ionian Islands were a borderland par excellence and exhibited some
of the key characteristics of a borderland society, especially cosmopolitanism and
cultural hybridity. The central goal of the paper, then, is to explore the social
ramifications of boundary changes on people living in a border region by incorporating a
new analytical framework, “island borderlands”. It argues that islands were central in
the exchange and interchange, circulation and dissemination of ideas from the West.
They were also central in the emergence of national identity. This paper uses the Ionian
Islands as a case study for the examination of the transmission, circulation and
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transformation of ideas, politics and economic systems in the Mediterranean. The
Islands incorporated an innovative network for the exchange of ideas that meant they
did not simply imitated their imperial rulers but borrowed ideas and systems that were
relevant to local beliefs and politics. The project offers new answers to Greek
historiographical questions about national identity, politics, and nation state formation.
Nuno Ornelas Martins, University of the Azores, “Power, Maritime trade, and the Change
from a Mediterranean-centered Economy towards an Atlantic-centered Economy”
Mainstream economics tends to neglect Adam Smith’s claim that the division of labor is
limited by the extent of the market, and takes division of labor and supply factors to be
the driving engine of economic development. However, the role of trade and
commerce, that is, of demand, is essential for geographical specialization and division of
labor, and the causal relation also works in the opposite direction. Furthermore, political
and military power, often forgotten in economic analysis, played a great role in the
establishment of markets for commerce and trade. And since maritime transportation
of goods has typically been the more efficient method of transportation throughout
history, geographical locations connected by water can then be seen as promising
objects of study, with an organic logic of their own, which cannot be fully captured by
approaches which fail to note the integrated nature of systems connected by water. In
this context, fields like Mediterranean Studies or Atlantic History, which have received
more attention in recent times, constitute promising fields of research, by focusing
more directly on a system connected by water. The present article addresses the
formation of economic systems in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic from this
perspective.
6B. Art History II
Chair: Cássio da Silva Fernandes, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)
Ana Duarte Rodrigues, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, “The Importance of Gregorio
de los Rios’ Treatise for the Mediterranean Garden”
This paper seeks to explore the importance for Mediterranean gardens of the book
Agricultura di Jardines (1592) by Gregorio de los Rios, the physics and gardener of the
Spanish king Philip II at the royal villa of Aranjuez. This book has circulated in Portugal by
then. The values of sightseeing, colors, odors, sounds and of some specific botanic
species are for the first time approached in a treatise written in the Iberian Peninsula.
Especially important is the fact of considering only ornamental flowers and plants, but
although fruit trees are not included, orange trees are because they are considered
ornamental. The description of each flower and its color, the absolutely necessity of
jasmine in gardens because of their smell, as well as of nightingales because of their
sound, but also on the statements he does on orange trees, turn this book into one of
the most complete theoretical work on 16th century Mediterranean and Iberian garden.
Finally, we want to cross the theoretical statements of Gregorio de los Rios’ treatise
with some other Italian and French treatises of the same period and with
Mediterranean gardens evaluated as examples of Renaissance Mediterranean gardens.
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Cássio da Silva Fernandes, “Jacob Burckhardt, historiador da arte: os colecionadores no
Renascimento italiano” [“Jacob Burckhardt, Art Historian: Collectors in the Italian
Renaissance”]
There is a deep identification between Italian Renaissance, conceived as historical
period, and the name of the Suisse historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897). Formed by
the lessons of the scholars responsible by the consolidation of the Historical Science at
the University of Berlin during the 19th Century, Burckhardt maintained for all his life a
contact with the most diversified sources from that period. The product of his studies
had such an important significance in this context, that is almost impossible to think on
Italian Renaissance, as a unitary historic moment, without doing reference to
Burckhardt, so the conception and the formal aspect were originally due to his
discovery. This discovery became a reality with the publication in 1860 of his most
famous book, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Culture of the Renaissance in
Italy). But the book that summarized his discovery was not an isolate production among
his works. It was actually the first result of a work that occupied him for several decades,
revealing that the historical discovery of Burckhardt gave up a long process, until the
last years of his life. So, after the establishment of the chair of Art History at the
University of Basel, Burckhardt is dedicated to systematically study the art-historical,
composing, in two stages, a series of manuscripts on Italian Renaissance painting. In the
first step, it makes up the manuscript entitled Die Malerei Inhalt und nach Aufgaben
(The painting According to the Topics and Tasks). In the second part of this study,
between May 1893 and December 1895, the historian conceived three long
manuscripts: "The altarpiece" (Das Altarbild), "The portrait in Italian painting" (Das
Portrait in der italienischen Malerei) and "collectors "(Die Sammler). These manuscripts
contain the content of his ultimate intention to conceive Italian Renaissance painting, as
he himself said in different occasions, according to "themes and tasks “and "the means
and capabilities." Burckhardt has even defined his own role in the art-historical study
from a sentence, elaborated in the end of his life: "Die Kunst nach Aufgaben, das ist
mein Vermächtnis" (The art according to the task, this is my legacy). With the phrase,
the historian intended to reveal exactly his interest in Italian art of the Renaissance
according to the origin of patronage and its role in the idealization of the works. It was a
way of approaching the world of artists, or the peculiarities of work in the workshops of
craftsmen and the relationship with patrons, included therein often the role of scholars
counselors in the composition of the work plan and even of the iconography, so he
privileged the material knowledge of works of art, the way they had been created,
collected and evaluated. In this sense, we intend to focus on the text "The Collectors",
with the focus mainly on two aspects: first, in an attempt to understand how Burckhardt
frames the study of the collectors in his big project to conceive together art and culture
of Renaissance in Italy, and second, in order to understand how the text of Burckhardt
on the collectors can open a field of Renaissance studies on collection and patronage in
art history.
Jennifer Roberson, Sonoma State University, “An Uneasy Coexistence: The Islamic
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Monuments of Cordoba in the 20th Century”
Although parts of Spain were under the leadership of Muslim rulers for over 700 years,
during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, Catholicism was Spain’s state religion.
Franco envisioned a return to a Golden Age where the people were united by their
Catholic faith. However, at the same time, he did promote close connections with
Morocco when seeking support in the Civil War and he courted Arab-Islamic leaders
when Spain was refused membership in the U.N. During these periods, Spain’s Islamic
past, which had largely been disregarded, became a source of curiosity. While many still
sought to minimize the impact Islam had had on Spanish culture, an atmosphere of
better mutual understanding was promoted. This was evident in the treatment of some
of the Islamic monuments, most notably the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Although reconsecrated as a Catholic cathedral in 13th century, during Franco’s reign Muslim
diplomats were given tours of the mosque and allowed to pray. Following the Franco’s
death, a new constitution was established, religious freedom guaranteed, and Islam in
Spain was officially recognized. Given the new environment, one might expect an
increased interest in Spain’s Islamic past. To an extent this did occur. However, at the
same time, when confronted with a growing Muslim community, uneasiness with the
Islamic past also emerged. At the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the question of allowing
Islamic prayer became a source of tension. The control of other monuments, especially
a derelict convent that had once been a mosque, sparked debate. This paper examines
the reception of the Islamic monuments of Cordoba in the late 20th century and the
controversies that arose in the post-Franco era.
6C. Mediterranean Cultural Identities
Chair: Simona Wright, The College of New Jersey
Simona Wright, “Mediterranean Tales: Italy and the Other”
In the last few decades Italy has experienced firsthand the phenomenon of migration.
From country of emigration Italy has turned into a sought after destination for Africans,
Asians, and South Americans. The large number of immigrants, legal and illegal, has
transformed the social fabric of Italy and is now transforming its cinema. The paper will
analyze the movies that have been released in the last 10 years that deal with the
journey on the Mediterranean. In particular, the paper explores the theme of
immigration through the lenses of Emanuele Crialese's Terraferma, Mohsen Melliti's Io,
l'altro, and Daniele Del Grande's Mare Chiuso. Special attention will be given to the
cinematic representation of themes such as Alterity/Otherness, Solidarity, and
Resistance.
A. Bahadir Kaynak, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, “Does Political Trilemma Exist?
Lessons from Turkish and Brazilian Experiences in the Last Decade”
Dani Rodrik’s now famous definition of political trilemma claims that economic
globalization, political democracy and sovereign nation-states are mutually
irreconcilable. Especially after the last wave of globalization starting in the 1980s,
governments found it increasingly harder to conduct economic policies autonomously
31
and saw their options constrained by the market dynamics. Neoliberal market reforms,
adopted after expiration of the embedded liberalism of Cold War years, integrated
national markets to the web of international market forces. Eventually, observers saw
nation-state’s discretionary power curtailed or converted into a competition state to
mobilize the economy for survival in the global economic struggle. This dynamic, as
could be seen from the crisis in Europe, triggered forces for further integration and
transfer of authority from national governments to supra-national entities. However,
the model’s explanatory power for the recent developments in emerging markets
should also be tested. Countries like Brazil and Turkey have not only adopted market
reforms in the last decades but are also showing a tendency towards further
democratization as peripheral political forces now find their place at the center of
political stage. Thus, the question now becomes whether there are specific
circumstances where democratic politics and economic globalization can be reconciled.
Or under certain constraints posed by global economy, democratic politics and nationalsovereignty are adopting themselves to the new conditions?
James Nikopoulos, Nazarbayev University, “Greece’s Florentine Muse”
Greece in the 19th and early 20th century found itself confronted by a sudden identity
crisis. Its slowly gained independence from under Ottoman rule forced a reconsideration
of what constituted this very young country in light of this very old concept of Hellas.
One of the more polemical issues involved what would become of the Greek language. A
split formed between those who espoused the living variant of the language and those
who advocated for katharevousa, an artificial Atticized form of Greek invented in the
nineteenth century. For those who advocated the demotic, the figure who continued to
surface was Dante Alighieri, whose own espousal of Italian over Latin made him an
example to be followed. My paper examines the parallels between the linguistic and
political situation of modern Greece and medieval Italy, aiming to account for why a
foreign model would prove so relevant to a debate on the Greek language during the
early years of the Greek state.
Saturday, June 1st
Saturday 10:00 AM – 12:00 noon
7A. Current Philosophical Perspectives [Perspectivas da Filosofia na Actualidade]
Chair: Álvaro Monjardino, University of the Azores
Marta Dias Barcelos, University of the Azores, “Person and Body: Rethinking Today an
Old (Bio)ethical Problem”
The concept of "person" analyzed in this paper is thought to be part of the
anthropological and philosophical legacy of ancient Greece, and emerges as a corporal
and spiritual entity, which determines its singularity at the level of community.
Nevertheless, one of the challenges emerging at present is the impact that science can
32
have on the bios, manipulating what was once considered natural. For this reason, the
scientific intervention in the human body holds an important place in current
philosophical inquiry. More precisely, this is expressed through an ethical consideration
concerning the scientific applications of artificial manipulation of human life and
systematization of principles designed to safeguard the integrity of the person.
Josélia Ribeiro da Fonseca, University of the Azores, “Citizenship: Passive Antiquity,
Active Contemporaneity?”
To the origin of citizenship concept is associated an active dimension. In Ancient Greece
of the fifth century BC, the historical context in which it first appears, citizenship was
conceptually understood as the capacity to participate in the life of the polis, in order to
the welfare of the community. Although this capacity of participation has assumed
restricted and exclusivist character, just was recognized the political right of
participation to the Athenian male, is undeniable a connotation of activity that is
implied in the concept of citizenship.
For different reasons, in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age there is a depreciation of
active dimension of citizenship in favor of a protectionist policy practice, in which was
submitted the citizens’ rights of participation to the protective power of the Seigneur or
the State, which them assurance their safety and well-being in case of war.
The French Revolution, 1789, was a milestone for the reconceptualizationof the
citizenship concept and, consequently, to resume the practices of participation, under
the aegis of the principles of equality and freedom and safeguarded by a language of
rights.
In terms of citizenship, contemporaneity is marked by struggle and by affirmation of a
democratic perspective, which restores the active dimension of citizen’s participation,
recognizing everyone, without exception, the right to community intervention.
Thus, we ask and discuss the reasons why today – in the political, social and education
domains – it appeals to the need of emergence of active citizenship. The deconstruction
of this semantic redundancy requires that we reflect on the causes of the passivity of
the citizens of the twenty first century, which, in our view, be explained by
permissiveness and protectiveness of the State of Social Welfare and the lack of
educational process, that promote the citizens' consciousness as integrated members of
society with responsibilities in her.
Gabriela Castro, University of the Azores, “Phenomenology and Bio-Art”
A descrição eidética do acto cognitivo, levada a cabo por Husserl, revelou serem a
intuição e a evidência os seus conceitos fundamentais e inseparáveis, que requerem
uma nova abordagem fenomenológico-estética pois o objecto artístico alterou-se de
modo significativo com o avanço científico-tecnológico, que a segunda metade do séc.
XX conheceu. O objecto científico deixou de ser o “dado” e passou a ser o “construído”,
isto é, o produzido ou o criado pela inter-relação existente entre o cientista e a sua
investigação.Esta nova realidade projecta, não a diferença entre duas realidades, arte e
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natureza, mas a sua união, união que no séc. XXI encontra a sua expressão numa nova
representação artística denominada bio-arte.
7B. Medieval Studies II
Chair: Joan Dusa, Los Angeles
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Valdosta State University, “Either/Neither—How the Beaver
Became a Medieval Model for Gender Ambiguity”
A marginal illustration of a beaver castrating itself at the bottom of the opening page of
the copy of Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose (Romance of the Rose) in British
Library Stowe MS 947 calls into question the nature of the commentary the maimed
animal might offer on the thirteenth-century Old French Rose text. While Sylvia Huot
argues that the marginalia intends to reflect upon castration thematics in the text,1 I
suggest that the mutilated mammal insinuates an indeterminate gender for the
character below whose miniature it occurs.
Since classical times, Greek and Latin works on natural history have described the
curious castrating behavior—or castrated state—of the beaver, usually asserting that
the beaver either lacks testicles, or castrates itself to avoid hunters who chase it for its
valuable male organs. My study situates the animal within the Physiologus and Romance
bestiary traditions of other creatures exhibiting non-normative gender or sexuality. I
examine how the narrative of the castrating castor gained purchase, and interrogate
other reasons for the belief in the beaver’s intersex state. Finally, I relate the castor to
the character in the Rose below whose illumination its sketch occurs, suggesting that
the gender ambiguity of the beaver glosses and parallels that of the puzzling personage.
Glenn W. Olsen, University of Utah, “Sodomy’s Road from Anselm of Canterbury to
Albert the Great”
In 2011 I published Of Sodomites, Effeminates, Hermaphrodites, and Androgynes:
Sodomy in the Age of Peter Damian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies) I
am now at work on a follow-up volume covering the period from Anselm of Canterbury
to Albert the Great. In this paper I propose to outline my overall analysis, and
specifically what is the core of my argument concerning the changing conceptualization
of sodomia during this period.
Adam J. Goldwyn, Uppsala University, “Seas, Coasts and Sailing Ships: Ecocritical
Approaches to the Mediterranean in the Medieval Romance”
The proposed paper will apply contemporary developments in ecocritical theory to
examine the literary construction and metaphorical significance of the Mediterranean in
medieval romances. Romances were produced by writers from all across the
Mediterranean basin, and the Sea itself, from the Strait of Gibraltar in the West to the
1
Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript
Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 275, 277.
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Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in the East, often featured in these tales of adventure,
love, travel and wandering.
Applying a comparative perspective, the paper will examine the Mediterranean in, for
example, the Old French Aucassin and Nicolette, about the Mediterranean wanderings
of the French prince Aucassin and his Carthaginian beloved Nicolette; Boccaccio’s story
of Alatiel in The Decameron, the daughter of a Muslim king shipwrecked in Italy, and the
Byzantine Tale of Paris, in which the Trojan prince wanders the coastline of the Eastern
Mediterranean in pursuit of Helen. An examination of the frequent shipwrecks and
tempests which wash the characters on strange coasts and among strange people will
reveal much about the medieval attitude towards the Sea and its role in their lived
experience and literary imagination.
7C. Turkish Music
Chair: Ufuk Serin, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Middle East Technical University),
Turkey
Zeynep Barut, State Conservatory of Music, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (İTÜ), “An
Analysis of the Reflection of Turkish Music Culture on Western Music”
Music is an essential component of Turkish culture. As for the Turkish music culture, it is
musical way of thinking and expression unique to Turkish people, which has lived up
until today since the appearance of Turks on the stage of history. Turks have spread
across a vast geographical area throughout history and have interacted with different
music cultures. As a consequence, Turkish music culture has been nourished by various
branches and has gained a rich structure. Turkish music has always been an object of
interest and curiosity for researchers in terms of its sound system, "Makams", and the
distinction of the rhythms used. We can see the traces of such a rich cultural heritage
clearly in the Western World. In this paper, which examines the flow of our national
culture from the East to the West, Western musicians who contributed to our global
music heritage being influenced by Turkish music and their pieces will be presented.
Şerife Güvençoğlu, State Conservatory of Music, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (İTÜ), “A
Master of Turkish Classical Music: Itri”
His real name was Mustafa, and he was sometimes referred to as Buhurizade Mustafa
Efendi. Mustafa Itri, more commonly known as Buhurizade Mustafa Itri, or just simply
Itri was an Ottoman-Turkish musician, composer, singer and poet. Itri was a major
exponent of Turkish classical music. He was born and grown up in İstanbul in the 17th
century. Itri lived between 1640 and 1712, and is regarded as the master of Turkish
classical music. He is believed to have been a Mevlevi, and composed religious music for
this order. He lived through the times of five Ottoman Sultans. He became well known
during the time of Mehmet IV. His compositions always won approval of the Sultans and
he was usually the guest of the palace to perform his compositions. As with most
composers of his day, Itri was also a poet. He used poetic forms based on the classical
Ottoman school of poetry (Divan), as well as those based on syllabic meters identified
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with folk music and poetry. Unfortunately most of his poetry has not survived to this
day. He was also interested in gardening. He was a very prolific composer with more
than a thousand works. However, only about 40 of these survived to this day. Due to the
300th anniversary of musician Buhurizade Mustafa Itri’s death, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has declared 2012 the
“International Itri Year.”
Fatma Gökdel, State Conservatory of Music, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (İTÜ), “NonMuslim Composers in Turkish Music Tradition”
A great variety of peoples living within the Ottoman Empire all contributed towards the
dominant Turkish music culture. The separate character of the non-Muslim societies
displays some very interesting aspects. Creating masterpieces especially in the areas of
architecture, handicrafts and music, the members of these communities maintained
especially close ties to the cultural environment of the Empire. The Minorities and nonMuslim musicians both learnt lessons from Turkish teachers and began to give lessons
to Turks after they specialized in their art. There were even some who became teachers
of that time’s statesmen. At the top of this category were the Armenians, Greeks and
Jews. When minority and non-Muslim musicians became masters in both Turkish
musical instruments and in vocals, they not only shared their art with the people and
the communities with whom they shared the same beliefs but also they shared it with
the general public. Though not represented as heavily and the area of performance,
there were non-Muslim composers who produced masterpieces of music. This tradition
has continued into the Republican period as well, with many artists today producing
works in Turkish style and musical approach.
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